Blog Post #15

1. The thoughts of my classroom at the beginning of the year aren't too different from what they are now. There are some changes, but for the most part, my classroom will still be basically the same format. I want my classroom to be teacher-centered, but collaboration as well. The difference in my classroom now and what it was at the beginning of the semester, is that my classroom will be about half lecture, half interactive work among the students. This class has taught me that in order to reach your full potential, you must learn on your own. You can only reach certain levels of thought process if you're spoon fed every little bit of information. Learning isn't just taking in information and regurgitating it to make an "A" on a test. It's taking initiative to go find information that will help you not only become more intelligent, but to broaden your horizons of what you'll learn. Doing things for yourself will also help keep an open mind. That's one of the big things that this class has taught me. 2.

Project 16

PLN report

Using all of these resources in this class have really helped me learn for myself. Instead of having someone in front of the class lecturing about something, I have to take the initiative to learn on my own instead of barely paying attention to a teacher talking for an hour. Using Twitter to see how other people are using networks to their advantage has helped me a lot in seeing other people's point of view, so I don't feel so strange.

Blog Post #14

CourseSmart has come up with a digital textbook. This allows teachers to track what a student has read and the main concepts the teacher has covered. One problem that they have faced is that the students would make decent grades, but then the teacher would look at the textbook tracking and the student will have only opened the book once. One other issue is that the software wouldn't work some of the time. The teacher realized that the students would still make decent grades without opening the book very much. She was extremely confused by how that worked.

I would wonder how some students would do well on my tests without opening the book very much. I would have some questions if the student was regularly reading, but not doing well on the tests. It would make me think they were just opening the book and not actively reading it.

I would not like this if this were a part of my schooling. Were college students. We don't need someone hovering over us to make sure were doing our readings. That's the whole point of college, is to learn how to do your work on your own and not to have someone holding your hand throughout the whole process.

I would ask the teacher if the grades improved significantly throughout this process.

I would ask the students if they had any freedom in this class.

I would agree with a few of the comments left on there. I don't agree with this type of classroom.

project #15 smartboard 2

Blog Post #13

1. Mr. Crosby shows in this video that learning can be fun and easy. By using a lot of hands on activities, he showed the students that learning doesn't have to be boring. The hot air balloon activity is a good example of a hands on activity that will entertain and teach the students at the same time. I like how he uses blogs as an interactive way for students to discuss what they learned in class. I hope I'm able to use blogs in my classroom so my students will have a different way to discuss topics that doesn't take up unnecessary class time.

2. The Blended Learning Cycle is online, classroom, and mobile learning all blended together. The cycle it all goes through is engaging, exploring, expanding, explaining and evaluating. Paul Anderson uses this a lot in his classrooms. He asks the students a question and they answer it through the means that he tells them. After that, they look at a video. The video is a great reference for the students to look back on. He then assigns a reading about the topic. Next is review. Review gives him an idea on where the students stand when it comes to subject matter. Mr. Anderson likes to run his classroom like I like coach. I call it "perfection before progression." This means the students can't move on until they understand what they're doing completely in that subject. The final step is a summary test that test them on everything they have learned. I like the way this classroom is set up. One of the main things I like is that the students don't move on to the next subject until they understand the topic they're on.

Blog post #12

1. Watch "Teaching History using Virtual Classrooms in Buckinghamshire."



How would you use Virtual Classroom in your own classroom? In what ways are your ways similar to those of Sarah Gould?

I would use Virtual Classroom to share certain documents in history with my students. Virtual Classroom is a good way for the students to be interactive and chat amongst one another that's not unorganized group work. It's also a good way to save paper. When I was in high school my history teachers would want us to look at certain documents or a few pages out of a book, so they would go to the copy machine and print off over 100 copies to give to us. I would look at it maybe one time and throw it away, or put it in my folder with all the other papers I looked at once. Virtual classroom eliminates a lot of those problems. You don't have to go through the trouble of making copies of all these documents, and it prevents clutter. Another great thing about it is that any student can go online whenever they want and look at it.

I like how Sarah Gould uses Virtual Classroom to share certain documents to her classroom. I would probably split them into groups of two like she did so they are not only learning history, they're learning social skills as well.